Silicon Photonics Adoption in UK Industry

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 - 8:00 am / 5:00 pm CEST

Silicon photonics is a rapidly evolving research field that has recently attracted a lot of interest from both academia and the semiconductor industry. This meeting is led by a team from the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton and includes contributions from key research groups around the UK, with the involvement of companies currently adopting silicon photonics technologies.

Call for POSTERS

This meeting is an opportunity for you to contribute to research knowledge, to meet with like-minded researchers and to network at a high level. The main meeting programme will be by invitation however we are keen to involve students and early career scientists who are researching novel and exciting new techniques or unique applications. We invite abstracts for poster presentation which will be peer reviewed and accepted on the basis of their technical merit. Posters will be located inside the Photonex exhibition area for maximum exposure, impact and will provide an invaluable networking opportunity.Two poster prizes One will be given for the best presented poster – voted on by delegates and a second for technical merit – voted on by the organising committee. ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: Email please to info@enlightenmeetings.com and quote “Poster submission / Silicon Photonics” in the subject line. Please provide a 100-200 word abstract.Deadline for submission: 25th September 2017 Authors will receive acceptance notification within 48 hours.

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

Register in Advance. Free Event.

PROGRAMME:

10.30

Introduction and welcomeProf Graham Reed

SESSION 1: Chair:Dr Callum Littlejohns

10.40

KEYNOTE SPEAKERHow Rockley Photonics works with academia, and why it works for us
Dr Andrew Rickman, Rockley Group, UKIntegrated photonics is the optical analogue of integrated microelectronics. It brings with it a future of optical systems on a chip that can dramatically improve the way we communicate, process information and sense our environment.The founders of Rockley Photonics and the Silicon Photonics team at Southampton University have been working together for over 25 years in this field. There have been two commercial successes following these activities and Rockley Photonics represents the third. We have combined our industry learning and experience over this long period to create a silicon photonics platform well suited for a wide range of applications, and for a timely arrival in the market, catching the cloud computing and IoT growth waves. These optical communication and sensor markets need photonic integration and miniaturization to drive performance and volume cost advantages to dramatically scale to ubiquitous mass deployment similar to microelectronics.To achieve our vision a strong focus on advanced research and development is required, and Southampton University ORC is a world leader in the silicon photonics field supporting the addition of advanced functional elements in our platform and continuing to extend the competitiveness and applications of the platform. The partnership has been recognised by the financial support from EPSRC in the recently awarded Prosperity Partnership – the first program of its kind in the UK to support successful, long-term academic/industrial relationships.

Silicon Photonics and UK industry strategy
Dr John Lincoln, University of Southampton, UKThe UK industrial strategy published in January 2017 sets out the government’s approach to growing UK industry and addressing challenges to the economy for the foreseeable future. Given the influence on science, technology and industry support, the strategy will have long term impact on photonics and the growth of silicon photonics in the UK. Alongside the key components of the industry strategy, the prospects for, hurdles and impact of securing a sector deal for photonics will be discussed.The industry strategy challenge fund is a key element of the UK industry strategy with up to £2bn a year in additional funding by 2020. Clearly articulating the challenges faced by industry that will open major new markets for UK companies are key to accessing this funding. Silicon photonics has many challenges, but can they be articulate in a publicly accessible strap-line? Is the impact on the UK economy going to greatest from globally located mega datacentres, financial trading, healthcare or even autonomous cars?

12.00

400G and beyond: the role of silicon photonics in high speed optics
Tony Pearson, Finisar Corporation, USA

12.20

Dielectric photonics as a technology for next generation LAN-WDM
Dr Bill Ring, BB Photonics, UKPhotonic integration and reduction in package cost are essential requirements for next generation LAN-WDM components. Today, discrete bulk type optic devices are used to perform the multiplexing and de-multiplexing function within these packages. To reduce cost either integration in the III-V semiconductor device or using silicon photonics platform are the current preferred approaches today.BB Photonics (A subsidiary of Poet Technologies) has been working extensively in the last couple of years on high speed integrated semiconductor devices and application of dielectric integration with a goal to enable athermal devices and lower cost packaging solutionsIn this talk we will discuss the development of dielectric photonics to enable low loss coupling to single mode fiber, integrated wavelength functionality and as a package platform for new lower cost components.

Silicon photonics have the potential to improve the interchip connection by using photons to replace electrons, which copper interconnection has higher energy consumption and lower transmission speed. However, silicon-based opto-electronic integration circuit need an efficient light source emitter due to silicon bulk has indirect band gap. III-V semiconductor compounds have superior optical properties. By using monolithic integration method, high-quality III-V laser diodes could able to monolithically grown on silicon. The obstacles of III-V materials grown on silicon are large material dissimilarities. In the last 10 years, the growth of III-V quantum dots – compound semiconductor nanosized crystals – on silicon substrates has been developed at UCL. The new growth techniques have been developed for the formation of III-V buffer layers grown directly on silicon substrates. We demonstrated the first practical silicon-based laser diode with lasing up to 120 oC, with a low threshold current density 62.5 A/cm2, a high output power exceeding 105 mW at RT, and a long extrapolated lifetime of over 100,158 hours. These results are a major step towards silicon-based photonics and photonic-electronic integration, and provide a route towards cost-effective monolithic integration of III-V devices on silicon platform.

14.50

TBC

15.10

Don’t forget the electronics – considerations for highly integrated silicon photonics devices
Christian Rookes, HiLight Semiconductor Ltd, UKAs silicon photonics develops towards its promise to deliver highly integrated optical devices that enable faster data rates, higher port densities and lower power consumption then we should also need to consider the preceding transmit and proceeding receive electronics that will be interfacing to or integrated with the silicon photonics optics. Some considerations include: process technology, RF performance, parasitic electrical effects, power consumption, scalability and cost.
Too often the design of optical emitters and receivers focuses primarily on achieving the desired optical performance whilst the interface to critical companion electronics is neglected or left to an afterthought. This presentation will outline the key electronic functions required in an optical communications transceiver and the design and technology development considerations needed to ensure optimum performance is achieved in highly integrated silicon photonics devices.

15.30

The evolution of photonics packaging
Bob Musk, Entroptix Ltd, UKPhotonics packaging started with a very humble beginning, the simple phototransistor. However, over the past decades, demands for higher speeds, enhanced functionality, and reliability have driven the development of improved photonics packaging technology. Today’s Photonic Integrated Circuits are now pushing the boundaries for photonics packaging with ever increasing numbers of electrical connections, optical interfaces, and very high speeds. Photonics packaging has typically been the most significant element of cost for a product due to the materials and assembly techniques employed. This is recognised and new approaches are now being developed to address this. The presentation will outline the background and evolution of photonics packaging from its inception through to the challenges of the present day and into the future.

15.50

Concluding comments by Professor Sir David Payne

16:00

End of meeting.

The 2017 Conference and Industry Programme, run by Enlighten Meetings with its partners, covers application and technology advances, innovations and emerging technologies.